Formability simulation of automotive panels at early design phases can reduce product and tooling development time and cost. However, for the simulation to be effective in leading the design process, fast and reliable results should be achieved with limited design definition and minimum modeling effort. In this paper, nonlinear finite element analysis is used to develop an automated process for the formability simulation of automotive body panels at early design phases. Due to the limited design definition at early design phases, the automated simulation process is based on the plane strain analysis for selected number of typical sections along the panel. Therefore, an entire panel can be analyzed with few sections. The state of plane strain can be easily induced, during simulation through symmetry and applied boundary conditions that simplify the modeling process. To study the reliability and effectiveness of the developed simulation process, the analytical results are compared with measured results of production automotive body side panels. The comparison demonstrates that the developed simulation process is reliable and can be effective for analyzing sheet metal formability, in early vehicle development phases.